PAN-GERMANY
THE DISEASE AND CURE
By ANDRÉ CHÉRADAME
New Hampshire League
To Provide For National Defense
and To Enforce International Peace
Branch of the National Security League
Gov. Henry W. Keyes, Honorary President
Frank S. Streeter, President
| Dr. Ernest M. Hopkins, President of Dartmouth | } | Vice-Presidents |
| Rolland H. Spaulding, Ex-Governor |
Executive Committee
| Clarence E. Carr | Andover |
| Frank Knox | Manchester |
| Lester F. Thurber | Nashua |
| James W. Remick | Concord |
| Gordon Woodbury | Bedford |
| Nathaniel E. Martin | Concord |
| James F. Brennan | Peterborough |
| Charles R. Tilton | Tilton |
| Andrew L. Felker | Meredith |
| John S. B. Davie | Concord |
| John B. Jameson | Concord |
| Arthur M. Heard | Manchester |
Secretary
| Hobart Pillsbury | Manchester |
Treasurer
| Edward N. Pearson | Concord |
Finance Committee
| Gen. Elbert Wheeler | Nashua |
| Walter M. Parker | Manchester |
| Harry H. Dudley | Concord |
| Frederick W. Sawyer | Milford |
| Rodney E. Smythe | Plymouth |
| E. H. Hallett | Lisbon |
| W. H. McCarten | Lancaster |
| Arthur H. Hough | Lebanon |
| Leslie P. Snow | Rochester |
| W. R. Porter | Keene |
| Charles E. Tilton | Tilton |
| John Scammon | Exeter |
| Fred H. Perry | Charlestown |
| A. L. Mansfield | Hillsborough |
| E. Bertram Pike | Haverhill |
| Perley R. Bugbee | Hanover |
State House, Concord, N. H., Feb. 1, 1918.
The purpose of this book is to bring to the people of New Hampshire a knowledge of the German plan to dominate the world by force and a clear view of what the Germans have done toward the success of their plan. It sounds a note of warning to every loyal American, to give his greatest help to win the war. Read this and think about it.
Henry W. Keyes. (signature)
Honorary President.
Frank S. Streeter. (signature)
President.
Clarence E. Carr. (signature)
Chairman Executive Committee.
Hobart Pillsbury. (signature)
Secretary.
Pan-Germany
The Disease and Cure
By André Chéradame
Reprinted from several issues of The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly Press
Three Park Street, Boston, Mass.
Copyright, 1917
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS, Inc.
[No student outside of Germany itself has studied the Pan-German scheme in all its details more thoroughly than the distinguished French publicist, André Chéradame. For more than twenty years he has devoted all his energies and resources, physical and intellectual alike, to a vigorous and exhaustive investigation of the origin and progress of the monstrous conspiracy which threatens to overwhelm the liberties of the entire world. His books, long unheeded, now read like prophecies. The papers reprinted in this pamphlet originally appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, where they attracted very great interest. They are now published in inexpensive form, so that every American who desires a clear understanding of the meaning of this war may have a chance to read them. To careful readers we recommend M. Chéradame’s more elaborate books, “The Pan-German Plot Unmasked” and “Pan-Germanism and the United States,” published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
A new series of articles by this author will appear in The Atlantic Monthly for 1918.]
PAN GERMANY at the beginning of 1917
PAN-GERMANY AS IT IS
Pan-Germany
The Disease and Cure
CHAPTER I
How Cheaply Germany Has Fought the War
At the beginning of 1916, I said in my book The Pan-German Plot Unmasked,—
‘Finally, when all negotiations for an armistice have fallen flat and Germany’s situation has become still more critical, we shall see Berlin play her trump card. Protests against territorial annexations will become insistent beyond the Rhine, secretly sanctioned by the German government, which will finally say to the Allies: “Let this slaughtering of one another cease! We are willing to listen to reason; we resign our claims to those territories of yours now occupied by our armies. The game has been played to a draw; so let us treat for peace on that basis.”
‘On the day when this proposition is put forward, the Allies will find themselves face to face with the most subtle move yet made by Berlin—the most insidious German snare. Then, above all things, must the steadfastness, the perspicacity, and the unity of the Allies be most brilliantly made manifest. The trick of the “drawn game,” if successful, would involve an overwhelming triumph for Germany and an irreparable tragedy for the Allies and for the liberty of the world.’
Only a few months after these lines were printed, the prophecy began to be fulfilled more and more completely. Every possible step has been taken by Germany to bring about peace on the basis of a draw. The slogan, ‘Peace without annexations or indemnities,’ was coined to that end. At first the Allies believed that this formula originated in Russia; as a matter of fact, however, it was worked out in Berlin and then suggested to the Russian Socialists through secret agents whom Germany has successfully established in the Petrograd Soviet. These Socialists, doubtless well-meaning, but over-fond of theories and always ready to embrace the wildest utopian schemes,—ignorant, too, of all realities, as has been shown by the steady aggravation of the general situation in Russia since they came into power with the Revolution,—have declared enthusiastically for the ‘peace without annexations and indemnities.’ As there exist also in the other Allied countries groups of Socialists with a stronger grip on theories than on facts, and also because Allied sympathies naturally rallied strongly to the support of the Russian Revolution, the formula, ‘peace without annexations or indemnities,’ thanks to its apparent origin, has unquestionably made serious inroads on a certain section of Allied public opinion.
The Stockholm manœuvres, engineered by all the powerful and varied means at the disposal of German propagandists, were designed to establish this formula as the fixed basis of all peace negotiations. When the astuteness of the Allied governments prevented the fulfillment of this attempt within the period desired by Berlin, the Vatican was persuaded through Viennese agencies to throw its influence on the side of peace as determined by Germany.
As a matter of fact, the Pope’s peace proposals, while not embodying the exact terms of the Kaiser’s formula, involved, in the last analysis, practically the same essential results. Berlin, therefore, in order to assure unceasing discussion of her formula,—a discussion tending at least to bring about an armistice, which would split up and morally disarm the Allies, thus making it possible for her to deal with them separately,—outdid herself in mobilizing toward one end the most widely divergent forces, from the Maximalist anarchists of Petrograd to the most hidebound reactionaries of the Sacred College. The extent, the vigor, and the persistence of the amazing ‘pacifist’ offensive launched by Germany were such that the expressions ‘peace without indemnities or annexations,’ ‘drawn game,’ ‘white peace,’ ‘paix boiteuse,’ have become as current in the Allied countries as if they had some established connection with reality. This is entirely contrary to the fact: with the best intentions in the world, peace without annexations or indemnities, as things stand now, is impossible. There can be no ‘white peace,’ no ‘drawn game,’ no ‘paix boiteuse.’
To tell the truth, a section of Allied opinion has become befuddled by these formulæ of Berlin, whose function is to accomplish in the moral order the same asphyxiating action as that of the gases employed on the battlefield by the German General Staff. The result of this moral intoxication is that important groups of the Allies begin to juggle with words and lose sight of facts. As the natural outcome of giving serious thought to impossibilities, grave errors are made in weighing the present situation, with an attendant weakening of the joint action of the Allied democracies. It is imperative, therefore, that the pursuit of Utopias, leading only to disaster, be abandoned, and that we return to those realities which alone can lead to victory and the establishment of a durable peace.
If the formula ‘peace without annexations and indemnities’ has been allowed to insinuate itself into the general discussion, it is only because great numbers of the Allied peoples fail to understand the overwhelming advantages which Germany, by means of the war, has been able to assure to herself for the present and the future. The object of this paper is to show just what these advantages are, and at the same time to brand the utter hypocrisy of the slogan, ‘peace without annexations and indemnities,’ which, regarded even in the most favorable light, would allow Germany to make off with immense booty, leaving the Allies to face the incalculable losses incurred by them in a war launched by their adversary.
The significance of the low rate
of German exchange
The continual fall of German exchange is regarded by many of the Allies as proof of the progressive and irremediable impoverishment of Germany. When, for instance, the mark drops 47 per cent in Switzerland, while the franc has depreciated only 13 per cent, Frenchmen are for the most part inclined to believe that the war has affected the two countries in relatively the same proportion; they then conclude that Germany’s financial situation is infinitely worse than that of France. In reality, such a comprehensive conclusion cannot be reached simply through the rise and fall of exchange, which reflects only certain special aspects of the financial situation of a country.
Among the various causes affecting exchange, there are two principal ones. The first is moral. It cannot be denied that the fluctuation of exchange responds to foreign confidence. If German exchange is low, it implies, to a certain extent at least, the existence of a universal conviction that in the long run Germany cannot hold out against her formidable ring of adversaries. As a result, there is no great demand for the currency of a state whose credit, it is thought, must finally collapse. It should be noted, however, that the reason for this fall of exchange is only a moral evaluation anticipating a probable outcome; it is not due to a mathematically certain estimate of what Germany now stands to win or lose as a result of the war.
The second great factor affecting exchange, on the other hand, is based on present realities which are susceptible of being accurately determined. Germany, since she has been blockaded by sea, exports infinitely less than formerly; consequently, her ability to settle her accounts in foreign countries is limited. When she was able to sell the United States a million marks’ worth of merchandise, she then had at her disposal a million marks with which to pay cash for such imports as she needed. Now that her exports have been so reduced, she has little money to spare for spending abroad. If she wishes to increase these foreign purchases, she must export her gold and consequently reduce the security behind her banknotes. This results in a lowering of the basis of German credit, with a resulting drop in exchange.
We shall now see that this falling exchange, whatever its importance, does not take into account all the elements of the general financial situation.
If the blockade of Germany seriously complicates her food problems, on the other hand it is in a way advantageous from a financial point of view. In a word, when Germany found herself blockaded she was obliged to evolve means of existing on her own resources or those of her allies. Our enemies had great difficulties of organization to overcome, but they turned them to good account: for if Germany’s exports are small, her imports have been correspondingly reduced. Hence she needs to send very little money abroad—a fact which is financially in her favor.
Now, the case of France is radically different. The French government, feeling assured of the liberty of the seas and believing that the war would be a short one, found it more expedient to place enormous orders abroad than to rely on domestic resources to supply the nation’s need. As a result, French imports, according to published statistics, exceed exports by one billion of francs a month. This means that, as things stand now, France must pay to foreign countries the staggering sum of twelve billion francs a year, with no corresponding compensation, since her purchases consist of products which are destroyed in use. For this reason France is undergoing serious impoverishment while Germany gets off comparatively easily. It is therefore plain that the fluctuations of exchange bear little relation to those conditions which must be taken into consideration in making an appraisal of the general situation; they reflect, in fact, only a special and limited aspect of the financial situation as a whole. Popular conclusions drawn from the fall in the value of the mark are false when attempts are made to give them an absolute or general significance.
Why people are still ignorant of the vast advantages
gained by Germany from the war
Many of the Allies are hoodwinked by the ‘great illusion’ which even now prevents them, to their endless detriment, from seeing things as they actually are. In the Allied nations, in fact, people continue to speak of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, as if these states remained just as they were before the war. But these terms have no longer any relation to reality. The Quadruple Alliance of Central Europe is simply a great illusion, studiously fostered by William II, for by its means his plans are vastly facilitated. As a matter of fact, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria-Hungary are not the allies, but the vassals, of Berlin, and their influence with her is less than that of Saxony or Bavaria. The rulers at Constantinople, Sofia, Vienna, and Budapest are simply marionettes moved by threads which are pulled by Berlin according to her strategic needs.
Very often we hear it said, ‘Germany has created Mitteleuropa.’ This is another mistake. Geographically speaking, Mitteleuropa includes only Central Europe; and Germany’s dominion is infinitely further flung, extending as it does from the west front in France to the British front before Bagdad. If we wish to see things in the light of reality, we must say, for the present at least, ‘There is no longer any Germany; instead, there is Pan-Germany.’ This is an essential assumption if we are to reason justly. The map of Pan-Germany at the beginning of 1917, which is printed above, shows clearly the essential, but all-too-little-known elements of the present situation, which is characterized by the fact that 73 million Germans, aided by 21 million vassals,—Magyars, Slavs, and Turks,—have reduced to slavery 82 millions of Latins, Slavs, and Semites, belonging to thirteen different nationalities. Pan-Germany, which has now almost completely reached the limits set by the Pan-German plan of 1911, consists, therefore, of one vast territory containing about 176 million inhabitants and natural resources of the greatest variety.
I beg my readers to refer to this map of Pan-Germany every time it is made desirable by the text. This repeated study of the map is indispensable to a clear and complete comprehension of the demonstration which follows. As regards the profits which Germany has wrung from the war, it is particularly important, in order to grasp the idea of Pan-Germany; for it is the direct result of its creation that Germany, in spite of the losses and expenses inevitably incurred by a warring nation, has been able to assure herself of certain advantages which, considered as a whole, far outbalance her losses and expenses, as we shall see.
In order to understand the nature of these advantages, one point must first be made clear.
The war has cost the Germans comparatively little
For six fundamental reasons, the conduct of the war has really cost the Germans far less than it has cost their adversaries.
1. No Experimentation. Germany, in order to produce a vast output of various types of guns and projectiles economically evolved in times of peace, needed only to extend, by means of machinery of domestic manufacture, her arsenals and munition-factories, which before the war were already considerable. On the other hand, the production of war-material in France at the outbreak of hostilities was very slack, while in England and Russia it was almost negligible. In these three countries, therefore, it was necessary to improvise, as best might be, thousands of new plants, to equip them with machinery purchased in America at vast expense, and hastily to evolve new types of cannon, projectiles, and the rest. Now, improvisation, especially in war-time, means false starts and inevitable bad work, which must be paid dearly for. Germany was not obliged to incur these very considerable expenses.
2. Regulated Wages. The fact that the problem of German wages was worked out at leisure in exact correlation to productions whose types were exhaustively studied in the calm of peace-time certainly allowed the Germans to obtain war-materials at a lower net cost than was possible for the Allies.
3. The Prevention of Waste. The absence of experimentation and the simple extension to war-work of highly efficient industrial methods tested in peace-time, naturally allowed the Germans to avoid in all spheres those immense losses of material of every nature whose bad effects and heavy cost were incurred by the Allies. This state of affairs in France caused losses which were as expensive as they were inevitable. One may imagine the conditions existing in Russia, where control is far more difficult of exercise than in France.
4. Cheap Labor. The Germans have forcibly enlisted the labor of about two million prisoners of war. Moreover, the official French report of April 12, 1917, concerning acts committed by the Germans in violation of international law, asserts that in the occupied territories deportation of workers has been a general measure. It has ‘applied to the entire able-bodied population of both sexes, from the ages of sixteen to sixty, excepting women with young children.’
Now, the Germans requisition labor from among 7,500,000 Belgians, 3,000,000 French, 4,500,000 Serbians, 5,000,000 Roumanians, 22,000,000 Poles, Ruthenians, and Lithuanians—a total of 42,000,000 slaves.
Let us see what sort of remuneration is made. Take the case of a young girl of Lille, twenty years old, who was forced to work for six months, harvesting and threshing wheat and digging potatoes from six in the morning to twilight, receiving all the while the vilest food. For her six months of work she was given 9 francs, 45 centimes. The Germans, therefore, have at their disposal a vast reservoir of labor for which they pay next to nothing; moreover, the small amounts they do pay remain in Pan-Germany.
The Allies, on the contrary, pay high wages to their workers, and, when they run short, must needs pour out good gold in bringing reinforcements from Asia, Africa, and America. This means that a considerable part of the wages paid these foreign workmen will leave France or England for all time.
5. Free Coal and Iron Ore. In addition to their own mines, the Germans have seized important coal and iron mines in France, Belgium, and Poland. A vast proportion of their ore and coal therefore costs them nothing. Naturally, then, a German shell made with French iron and Belgian coal costs far less than a French shell made with American steel and English coal. As a result, the net price of a greater part of German munitions is much lower than that paid by the Allies.
6. Economical Transportation. By reason of the grouping of the Central Powers,—a result of the conquest of the Danube front by the Teutons,—Germany profits by a geographical situation which is infinitely more advantageous than that of the Allies, as regards not only the speed, but also the cheapness, of war-transportation. It is evident that it costs far less to send a shell from the Krupp factory to any one of the Pan-German fronts than to send an American shell to France, a Japanese shell to the Polish front, a French shell to Roumania via Archangel, or an English shell to the army operating in Mesopotamia. By the same token, the cost of transporting a soldier of Pan-Germany to any of the battle-fronts is infinitely lighter than that of transporting Allied soldiers from Australia or America.
We should note that each one of these six factors which we have just enumerated reacts profoundly on the sum-total of general war-expenses, and that, taken together, they involve a formidable sum. It can therefore truthfully be said that Germany carries on the war much more economically than the Allies. Figures are so far lacking which will give the true proportions, but we shall certainly remain well within the realities of the case if we conclude that, as a result of the six factors mentioned above, France must spend one hundred and fifty million francs for war material to every hundred million spent by Germany. When, therefore, France spends thirty billions, Germany evidently spends not more than twenty billions. And what is true of France applies even more accurately to some of the other Allied nations.
This is a fact of the greatest general importance in coming to a true understanding of the financial situation created by the war—a fact which takes on its full significance when we realize that Germany is not only carrying on the war cheaply, but that she has been enabled, by means of this war, to win very important advantages.
They consist of seven principal elements. The last six of these, it should be noted without fail, depend solely on the existence of central Pan-Germany—that is, on the hegemony exercised by Germany over Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey; they are therefore wholly independent of the first element, which relates to Germany’s occupation of enemy territories, particularly to the east and west. They may be summarized as follows:—